Last night I got a 1/2 ton chain hoist installed and lifted the body off the saw horses, spun both the pan and upper section around and brought the two to within a few inches of each other. IT'S STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A WHOLE CAR AGAIN! I was all smiles. Still got quite a bit of detailed cutting to do, test fitting and measuring but it's looking good!

Sorry, back OT... build is amazing... I wish I had the (time/space/money/patience) to tackle this, I think the only thing I might do different is convert it to RHD just for the hell of it

That's Nigel, he's an Abyssinian. He's 5 months old and is a crazy little guy.

Thanks, with all I have on my plate just getting the body back together and a few things shaved is more than enough for me. Remember I still have to fab up trans mounts, tackle the shift linkage and figure out the rear air ride.

Right, well I'm going at this thing pretty hard lately... got things lined up today to where I could start thinking about fitting the hood and fenders, just to see how things are shaping up. I have a bit more work to do on the passenger side, you can see the excessive gap in the hood.

I ran out of cutting wheels today (I'm doing all the cutting with an angle grinder :|) so I did some sand blasting, shaved the front license plate mount and welded up some cracked door hinge mounts.

That's Nigel, he's an Abyssinian. He's 5 months old and is a crazy little guy.

Thanks, with all I have on my plate just getting the body back together and a few things shaved is more than enough for me. Remember I still have to fab up trans mounts, tackle the shift linkage and figure out the rear air ride.

Right, well I'm going at this thing pretty hard lately... got things lined up today to where I could start thinking about fitting the hood and fenders, just to see how things are shaping up. I have a bit more work to do on the passenger side, you can see the excessive gap in the hood.

Nice... that's one of the breeds that the Singapura was developed from, IIRC... great looking cat.

Thanks. I like to think it will all be worth it when it fires for the first time and I drive it out of the garage....sideways.

Originally Posted by GTI0518T32

unbelievable work..

Thanks dude. I like to look at the car and think about how easy my next project will be. haha

I don't have any new photos... but things are progressing nicely. I need to trim another 1/4 inch out of the body in two spots to get things to line up nearly perfectly. Both doors now fit well, although I need to swap out the Squareback two bolt A pillars for my Notchback three bolt A pillars.
Cut the rot out of the left rear fender and cut repair sections out of a Squareback fender.. I'll weld it up when I'm positive that the body is where it should be.

Decided to take a look at the rust on the trunk.... started sandblasting and to my dismay I found 65 pinholes! Some of which were hidden under the paint. I welded all of that up and had to rebuild part of the bottom edge of the trunk as well. I layed on the Por15 really thick in the cavities where the pinholes formed... hopefully I never have to deal with that again.

That is absolutely incredible. As said before, with all the patching done over the course of the project, you essentially built it from scratch. I wonder how much raw weight you cut away for replacement.

I kind of had a rough template and some pictures to go by I guess. haha. Thanks. I may have cut away some weight, but most of it is going back in with the donor sections. I lightened the engine bay a little and the Type 1 conversion air beam will be significantly lighter. There is however, A LOT of scrap metal laying around the garage!

Anyway, still going. The body is so close to lining up now... almost ready to weld. I'm being super anal about checking the fitment, taking it apart, trimming, lining it back up again and refitting all the panels. I want the gaps to look good!

This past week the heat has kept me away from progress a bit... it's been around 33-36C all week.
Today I worked on the hood, sand blasted all the rust spots and sanded it down with 400 grit. I also primed the bare spots, but don't have any shots.

Welded up the original badge holes, cleaned up the welds and drilled new
holes for the early VW badge I got off the '62 Notchback.

I just couldn't pass up using this early badge, it's so cool! As you can see I have some pitting to deal with, I'm hopeful that the Por 15 tie coat high build primer will take care of most of that.

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I really appreciate it. Progress is fairly steady lately and I'm getting closer to making that fateful weld to finally mate the two body sections.

Good bye tribal fender art.

There was a nasty dent in the edge of the headlight bucket on this fender, I managed to beat most of it out and fitted the headlight and trim ring to check my work. It needs a little more hammer and dolly action and a tiny bit of fill.

Since the front air ride is pretty well all sorted out I decided to take a look at the rear end subframe and see what it all might look like. Got the torsion bars pulled out, turned out to be much easier than I thought to remove them I just needed a bigger hammer. This is all very roughly placed at his point, just for a rough idea. So the trailing arms are 944 turbo, the subframe is off my car and the trans is a Porsche 901 5 speed. Wheels are 8x16. The trans will sit a bit lower and further back... obviously.

Looks like I will need to narrow the rear end by moving the trailing arm mounting points inwards a good 1.5" on each side... give or take a bit.